Ex- FBI agent’s son says US left his fa­ther rot­ting in Iran jail

WASH­ING­TON— The son of the long­est- held civil­ian hostage in US his­tory slammed the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion for aban­don­ing the ex- FBI agent in an Ira­nian jail.

Ex- CIA con­trac­tor and exFBI agent Robert Levin­son has been miss­ing for nearly a decade. Now 68, he dis­ap­peared in mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances in March 2007 dur­ing a visit to the Ira­nian is­land of Kish.

He was re­port­edly in­ves­ti­gat­ing cig­a­rette coun­ter­feit­ing in the re­gion.

Af­ter Iran re­leased some US na­tion­als it was hold­ing fol­low­ing last year’s in­ter­na­tional nu­clear deal, his fa­ther’s fate re­mains alarm­ing, over­looked by Wash­ing­ton time and again, his son Dan Levin­son wrote in an opin­ion in the New York Post.

“The White House and State De­part­ment have avoided ac­knowl­edg­ing the ba­sic fact that he is a hostage,” he said on Mon­day. “When pressed by a re­porter about this, a State De­part­ment spokesman spent 3- 1/ 2 ex­cru­ci­at­ing min­utes re­fus­ing to call him a hostage.”— Agen­cies